


from death, with love

by kanxie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hannibal Lecter Has Feelings, Illnesses, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Reunions, Will Graham Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22824163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanxie/pseuds/kanxie
Summary: will graham dies in the fall. hannibal grieves in his own way.paintings, fevered sweats, and flannel.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 15
Kudos: 106





	from death, with love

The motions of Will and Hannibal had been set long before _this_ was ever a glint in the doctor's eye. The Bureau; the Bayou; the Botticelli; the baring of each other's cores, the roller coaster cogs began to click long before any of that to bring the two men towards _this._ What beauty _this_ is. How beautiful it is to be surprised, to be taken hostage by the now rather than to plan what comes next. In a fit of uncharacteristic elation, Hannibal thinks he should have entertained the practice sooner. 

He's smiling, a crumbling mask falling away in pieces, torn by the speed of the wind around them. Will, with his face tucked into the crook of Hannibal's neck, does not see the way that the older man loses himself in the feeling of rebirth. _Yes,_ he thinks, _after this, the battlegrounds of Troy will truly be ours._

Only _this_ was out of Hannibal's control. One could presume that Hannibal could have felt the shift before the fall and calculated accordingly. Instead he let Will guide them, confident that his equal would spread newly birthed wings and carry them far away to a life made for them.

Will does not resurface. In fact, he sinks so fast and so low, Hannibal is momentarily caught in the notion that none of it was real at all. It's as if the younger man had dissipated out of existence the second they broke the surface. He's pulled from the thundering waves by strong, familiar hands belonging to a strong, familiar woman who lets him search the horizon for a few moments longer. Out of every conceivable end to this chapter of their story, he could never entirely predict the possibility of the death of Will Graham.

They reach safe land and he seethes. He pushes his injured body to its limits and Chiyoh lets him. The quiet woman observes like a parole officer, uncaring that the man would hurt himself yet not wanting him in real trouble again; purely selfish desires. Hannibal pushes himself until his stitches tear and he collects the blood for an especially morbid portrait of the man who was ripped from him. Something dark and sensual wherein Hannibal is greeted at The Gates by his beloved, an underlying promise that the two are coming to rule whatever is behind those wrought iron bars.

The paintings go on for weeks until his wound becomes infected and he tends to it with an unbearably still doctor's touch. To let such a simple mishap bring his passing would be giving in to the enemy. As he finishes up, he looks down once more to find the bullet wound gushing. An entirely ocular sensation with no feeling of the hotness of blood. The doctor breathes deeply and is then greeted with clean stitches.

The symptoms start like they did for Will. The trauma of their bond being temporarily stretched between worlds is enough to set his brain aflame. Hannibal revels in the poetry of it. In another life, Hannibal would not have let his brain deteriorate, but he is changed now. He welcomes his hallucinations the more frequently they come; opens his memory palace and lets them haunt him there, too. Talks back to the paintings that whisper to him as he passes. Helps his disease along by forcing his mind to see the portraits lips moving along with their words. 

What he does not do is let himself see Will. Will shall be met in the afterlife, when the rotting sweetness of his cerebrum swells up like a balloon too big for his head. There are shadows suspended on dust of his lost lover in the corners of his vision, making themselves available should Hannibal let himself slip down that path. Instead he focuses on the paintings with unusual obsession. He fears that he is becoming pathological as he drains a pint of his own blood to get in enough detail for Will's curls. 

He continues to eat, drink, and clean. He finds stimulation in his new art and his inspiring hallucinations. He does not think about if the body has been found--his Will had been swallowed whole and will never be observed in its corporeal form again. Hannibal will never taste his meat, let alone taste his flesh and lips and affection.

_Oh, Will,_ he muses through the thickening heat of his thoughts, preparing a meal in the overlarge kitchen, _the things I had planned for us._ Hannibal ignores how his hands shake as he grasps at the remaining grace that his gait can muster, moving slowly to the empty dining room. He doesn't let himself imagine the way that Will would have laughed beautifully and caught him before his knees gave up on the stairs later that night.

It takes some time before Hannibal hears the clicking cogs of a roller coaster begin again, much faster than the last ride. He balances on the knife's edge of being suicidal and being victim to the fever that swirls in his skull. He knows his time is coming soon, sees it in the sweating and seizures and the fleshed out man in the corner of his eyes. He lets the smaller man watch as he paints his final piece: his mate and him in _The Bed, The Kiss_ by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. A shame, really, that the ache Hannibal felt for countless years, an ache to have Will in his arms in his bed back in Baltimore, never came true. He had picked the current safe house with that idea in mind. He did not dare to use the master bedroom since he stepped foot here. 

Death aches, Hannibal concludes. He does not feel guilt for having caused it, but a sense of clarity of what it's like. Sometimes tears slip from his eyes with the pounding in his head, vision hazy and muscles exhausted from a seizure. He is so lonely in this house. He is lonely when he presses his face to the cool countertop in the kitchen and imagines his sublime Will doing the same during his spar with the disease. Hannibal's has progressed much further than Will's had, of course, but the coolness still helps. It helps until it doesn't and when it doesn't he makes his final resting place in the middle of the untouched master bed, a familiar old flannel covering his torso like a blanket. 

"Hello, my love."

"Been a long time, Doctor Lecter. Saw you burnin' up for me out there."

"We have been known to run hot in each other's presence. One could say you had the right idea cooling us off in the roiling Atlantic."

"Never gonna forgive me for that one, are you?"

**Author's Note:**

> wanting to see hannibal slowly lose his mind without will was a completely self indulgent propellant for this
> 
> i just finished this series last month(?) and ive been going crazy over it


End file.
